The year’s crops at Pastime Farms were flattened by Katrina, likely bringing to an end the CSA deliveries for this year. Other farms in the area sustained varying degrees of damage estimated by AP at $900 million.

News about farm losses from Katrina can be followed from Google’s news service. Dar from the The Crescent City Farmers’ Market has posted two updates summarizing what she’s heard of market vendors: first post, second post. There is also a check-in forum at the message center they’ve set up.

Matt sends this report from Pastime Farms:

Hello Everyone,

I hope that everyone has made out alright through the hurricane. Unfortunately, the farm has been completely wiped out. All of the crops that we were harvesting as well as the ones coming up were completely flattened. We still had several crops in the ground that were spared from the storm, however, all of the power lines were destroyed, causing us loss of access to the wells. It has not rained a drop since Katrina and we are fearing that this will end our growing season for the rest of the year. There are also delivery route issues.

This pains me to say knowing that we could all use some fresh food. I have noticed that some of the local stores I’ve been to have hardly any produce. We are going to try to work with the Crescent City Farmers’ Market and other vendors/farmers who lost everything to get everything back in order. This will obviously put our focus on next year.

Jim and Pam out at Whispering Pines Farm in Loranger had quite a bit of damage, but they are still providing some of the North Shore with fresh pasture raised beef, pork and free range chicken. We had to cancel our first order of chickens, due to loss of communication with New Orleans. We plan on helping the local communities any way we can to get things back to normal. There are also still plans to have Free Range Turkeys for the holidays, as I’m sure we will all need to enjoy the family time this coming season.

Rus and I will be sitting down next week to see what we can do to help anyone in need.I hope this reaches everyone, I’ve received a dozen or so calls from members and have only been able to get through to a few. I’ve heard the phone/cable/internet lines would be down for a long while in certain areas. We just got our server up today for the first time. I will do my best to keep everyone informed with news from the farms.

Thanks,
Matt

The Crescent City Farmers Market has established a new message board.

Their main website is at best sporadically online, so for news and announcements please check the news topic of their new message board. There is also a forum to check in and tell the people you know from the market that you are OK, and another to discuss aid and relief efforts for farmers in the areas struck by Katrina.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, most of NOFC’s plans and activities are on hold.

As we all work on re-establishing our lives, we will also work on rebuilding the NOFC. For now, please check in via the mailing list or by posting a comment to this article.